It's time to embrace the "4th faction" and use it as a world-wide population equalizer

The attempts at balancing populations inside a server did not succeed. Being able to create multiple characters on a single server makes locking meaningless. Recommended status will only fix the balance for a week.

Let's just do things the other way around:Encourage overpoped factions on a server to move to the underpoped side on another server.

Screw transfer tokens. Allow players to change servers once a week.
Balancing the pop awards you a 7-days +25% XP on this server. Whatever money is "lost" by not selling bonuses is gained back by not losing player due to frustration.

You see , population imbalance will be in almost every game.
This "4th factioning" things you spout is nothing but an opinion , back in the days we used to call em Asslickers , not 4th/3rd/2nd factioners.
I believe this could be solved with a WORLD-DATA-BASE system , all your chars aren't linked into a server and you can use X char in X server at will , tho that might encourage 4th factioning , it might also stop it.

Example : Player "Yoloswaggerbadass" got sick of playing in X server because his faction is literally dominating , his homie "yoloswagbadass" tells him over skype to come to X server and actually kill something.
^not multiply that 3000 times.

What a coincidence, I actually just discussed something like this briefly with a friend today.

Screw transfer tokens, allow free transfers for anyone as long as their faction is overpop, and only if they transfer to a server where they are underpop. Your suggestion to limit this to one transfer per week seems like a good idea too.
Also, implement a faction-lock timer per server of at least 3 hours, that will elimiminate people being able to jump faction whenever an alert is going on.

The attempts at balancing populations inside a server did not succeed. Being able to create multiple characters on a single server makes locking meaningless. Recommended status will only fix the balance for a week.

Let's just do things the other way around:Encourage overpoped factions on a server to move to the underpoped side on another server.

Screw transfer tokens. Allow players to change servers once a week.
Balancing the pop awards you a 7-days +25% XP on this server. Whatever money is "lost" by not selling bonuses is gained back by not losing player due to frustration.

Discuss.”

They should have done this months ago.

A buddy of mine that is also in the bar industry once told me "The most expensive thing a bar can have is an empty seat." Same can be said about empty server space.

How did WoW set up their sever transfers? Wasn't it like $15 and you had to wait a few weeks for them to actually approve to move your characters?

But in very restricted numbers for the most part. Although some allow wild PvP and sometimes large raids over world map towns, the major bulk of the PvP happens in arenas of some sort, whether it's battlegrounds for WoW or RvR in GW2, Rift, Aion, Tera..

Smaller total capacity makes it easier to balance out PvP instances, and if not, you can still PvE in those games.

I honestly maintain that the problem is not overpopulation, the problem is the mechanics currently favour overpopulation. There is no reason why this should be the case. I HAZ MOAR GUIZE is not insta win in real life for a long list of reasons that could be emulated in fun game mechanics.

But for a pragmatic solution for the time being, sure. Yet, I imagine the problem here is that being able to do this is not cost free from the point of view of database manipulation.

I've said this in another topic already: this would just be a band aid. We need a fix to people saying "oh no fun fights, only getting steamrolled, gonna log off" and making the pop imbalance worse that way. So we need better fights, which is something that can only be achieved by an overhaul of lattice, the redeployment system, spawn rooms (people staying inside the spawn room only allow the enemy to zerg up ahead and steamroll even more), and even instant action.

“I've said this in another topic already: this would just be a band aid. We need a fix to people saying "oh no fun fights, only getting steamrolled, gonna log off" and making the pop imbalance worse that way. So we need better fights, which is something that can only be achieved by an overhaul of lattice, the redeployment system, spawn rooms (people staying inside the spawn room only allow the enemy to zerg up ahead and steamroll even more), and even instant action.”

No, trying to fix the pop from WITHIN a server is the band-aid.

You don't encourage people to fight on the other side; what's the point ? A 20% XP bonus ?
Why would they care, all of their certs and weapons are on their main character. Pointless.

PLAYERS WILL STICK TO THEIR MAIN CHARACTER.
This is where all the unlocks are.

Let them keep playing on this particular soldier, on another server where they contribute to balancing the pop.

You don't encourage people to fight on the other side; what's the point ? A 20% XP bonus ?
Why would they care, all of their certs and weapons are on their main character. Pointless.

PLAYERS WILL STICK TO THEIR MAIN CHARACTER.
This is where all the unlocks are.

Let them keep playing on this particular soldier, on another server where they contribute to balancing the pop.”

It could work, true, though it'd be a bit complicated to implement a fair system (people could use this to get a full cert refound for example and there's the SC bought weapons). Unless you want people to just switch to the same faction again, which wouldn't work because the TR in Europe wouldn't have anywhere to go. And I'm sure that a lot of people wouldn't like to leave their outfits and friends to another faction on another server for a 25% XP boost.

I don't want to encourage them to switch sides, I want to change the systems so they work with population imbalance and still provide good fun for all. When the game becomes fun again for the underpopulated side, people will return and play more (meaning more people playing at any given time). So we don't have the guys saying "screw it, all fights are 2 to 1 in the favor of the enemy".